abandonware games sorted by popularity

By the time Earthworm Jim hit DOS, its reputation already preceded it, and it largely lived up to the hype. This is a platformer that thrives on absurdity: a worm in a spacesuit, b...

When Strider (1989, DOS) hit PCs, gamers suddenly felt like ninjas who’d been dropped into a Cold War fever dream. You play as Hiryu, a futuristic assassin slicing through me...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find y...

Sokoban is one of those puzzle games whose rules can be explained in a sentence and whose harder levels can destroy an afternoon. The player controls a character inside a warehouse...

Planet's Edge is a 1991 science-fiction role-playing game that sends players across the galaxy on an epic mission involving exploration, diplomacy, and combat. Created by New World...

Before apps, spreadsheets, and AI Dungeon Masters, there was Dungeon Master’s Assistant Vol. 1. Released in 1988, this tool was a digital sidekick for pen-and-paper D&D p...

Syberia is a beautifully atmospheric adventure game that follows Kate Walker, a New York lawyer whose ordinary business trip turns into an extraordinary journey across a strange an...

Evasive Action is a space shooter that embraces speed and precision over spectacle. You pilot a small craft through dangerous environments, dodging obstacles and enemies with littl...

Sirwood throws you into a fantasy kingdom where the trees are friendlier than some of the locals. Half strategy, half adventure, it's the kind of game that expects you to think, pl...

X-Men: Madness in Murderworld sends Marvel's mutant heroes into the bizarre and dangerous amusement park created by the villain Arcade. Rather than offering a conventional superher...

Rayman Forever brings together Rayman's colorful platforming adventure and additional content in a package aimed at giving players a generous helping of Ubisoft's imaginative masco...

Rise of the Triad: Dark War is a 1994 first-person shooter famous for its fast action, outrageous weapons, and gleefully excessive violence. Built on an enhanced version of the Wol...

High Command: Europe 1939-45 is a strategy game that does not shy away from complexity, asking players to engage with history on a grand scale. The mechanics are detailed, sometime...

The Lost Patrol (1991, DOS) drops you into the brutal jungles of Vietnam, where survival depends on strategy, luck, and maybe divine intervention. You lead a squad of exhausted sol...

In Corruption, you’re a businessman trapped in a web of deceit, murder, and paperwork. It’s an interactive fiction game where every conversation could be a clue—o...

Named after the famously outspoken baseball manager, Earl Weaver Baseball takes the sport seriously, sometimes almost aggressively so. This isn’t about flashy graphics or arc...

Wizball is a wonderfully strange arcade game built around a simple but unusual mission: restore color to a world that has apparently decided that monochrome is fashionable. You con...

Released in 1990, Disc feels like a relic from a parallel universe where Frisbee is the most important sport in history. The game is minimalist to a fault: you throw discs, catch d...

Moraff's Dungeon of the Unforgiven is a first-person dungeon crawler filled with monsters, exploration, treasure, and the sort of dark corridors that strongly suggest turning aroun...

The Manhole: CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition (1994, Windows/Mac) is the kind of game that makes you feel like you’ve fallen into a dream. Created by the same minds behind Myst, it...

Afterlife is a simulation strategy game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1996 for Microsoft Windows and later made available on other platforms. The game wa...

EcoQuest 2 takes its environmental message seriously but packages it in a way that’s engaging rather than preachy. You explore lush rainforest environments, solving puzzles t...

Treasure Island turns Robert Louis Stevenson's famous pirate adventure into a compact computer game, giving you the chance to chase buried treasure without having to spend several ...

Civil War buffs, rejoice. Battle of Antietam (1985) lets you relive one of the bloodiest days in American history... via pixelated dots and turn-based tension. There’s no fla...

Dino Crisis takes the survival-horror formula and makes one very important adjustment: instead of zombies, you get dinosaurs. Because apparently undead people were not terrifying e...

Virtual Reality Studio is a DOS-era development tool aimed at creating interactive three-dimensional environments at a time when virtual reality was still surrounded by science-fic...

Port Royale is a 2002 trading and strategy game that lets players experience the life of a merchant in the Caribbean during the age of sailing ships. Instead of becoming a legendar...

Hard Drivin' is what happens when someone looks at arcade racing and decides that what it really needs is existential dread and a physics engine that actively judges your driving s...

Timequest is a time-travel adventure in which history itself becomes your playground, provided you are willing to accept the considerable responsibility of not accidentally destroy...

Released in 1993, Lethal Tender combines platform action with a satirical storyline centered on greed, money, and determined heroes. Players jump through colorful levels while coll...